About Us

The Kitchen Garden is a 25-acre, Certified Organic vegetable farm owned and operated by Tim Wilcox and Caroline Pam.

Our Story

We bring a love of good food to our passion for growing it! Tim and Caroline spent considerable time in their formative years living in Europe and their culinary experiences in France and Italy inform and inspire their products and philosophy. They met at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City but settled in the Valley because of its great community of young farmers and the local enthusiasm for local food. They started the farm in 2006 on an acre of rented land in Hadley.

Caroline Pam

Caroline grew up in New York City and earned a degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago. She worked as a journalist before discovering her passion for food and farming. She studied French cuisine at the French Culinary Institute and has also worked as a market manager at the Union Square Greenmarket in NYC, where she shared her enthusiasm for cooking with seasonal ingredients in cooking demonstrations. She spent a summer working on an organic farm in Italy before moving to the Valley to apprentice at Food Bank Farm. She was the Valley Advocate’s restaurant critic from 2005-2006 and has written for Edible Pioneer Valley.

Tim Wilcox

Tim is originally from Oneonta, NY and came to the Pioneer Valley in 2001 to attend Hampshire College. He spent time working at the Hampshire Farm and went to Italy to do research with radicchio farmers in Treviso for his thesis project. Tim is passionate self-taught cook; much of the food writing and recipes on this site stem from his 24-7 food obsession. He has put his culinary skill to work for the farm developing a homemade sriracha sauce and cooking scratch-made all local tacos for our farm festivals.

The couple have 2 children, Lily and Oliver, age 7 and 5.

The Farm

The Kitchen Garden is located on Silver Lane, a quiet side street about a mile from the center of Sunderland and five miles from UMASS Amherst. The farm consists of 13 prime tillable acres of Sunderland’s rich river bottom soil. The land is a long, narrow strip sliced out of a large open meadow, surrounded by pieces of land farmed by other growers. The land has been divided into smaller sections to allow many different types of crops to be planted, in contrast to the vast fields of sweet corn, parsnips, and potatoes that surround. The field offers many shifting vantage points from which to enjoy the sweeping views of nearby mountains. The farm is also home to many species of wildlife, especially birds.

Our Growing Practices

Our growing practices reflect our deep commitment to the quality of our products, the health of our land and the safety of our workers. We only use natural products and sustainable techniques to grow our vegetables, and in 2014 we became Certified Organic.